January 2008

My work shares a bathroom with a bank. So when I need to go potty, I do so in a public bathroom. And you all think you know how gross that is. I’ve seen a man washing his face from the urinal. I’ve heard the most disgusting sounds emanating from the toilet stall. I’ve seen things that I cannot describe, for I know not where they come from. I’ve heard a man coaching himself through the process of vomiting – over and over – into the toilet. I’ve heard someone poop in the urinal when I was in the toilet stall and seen the huge load of doody therein. And then today happened.

I pushed open the door to the bathroom, and there was a gentleman in the way. With his face in line with his shins. And his pants down around his ankles. Muttering to himself. With his bare ass gaping up at me. Reaching up to the auto-feed paper towel dispenser, grabbing paper towels a handful at a time, cleaning the shit from his ass and undies. Right inside the bathroom door. As if because he was doing this disgusting deed in the bathroom, no one else would conceivably need to use the bathroom, right? Did I mention he was muttering to himself? “They’re gonna kill me, babatty bee boo bah, grumble grumble, motherfuckers,” and on and on. As far as I can tell, this is an accurate representation of what he was saying. He was definitely riffing on sounds more than he was spitting out coherent words, but that’s not necessarily because he was crazy. It could have been due to a combination of shit-in-pants-related stress combined with head-near-bathroom-floor-related increased blood flow to the brain.

And he was wearing a suit, did I mention that? I didn’t. Not an incredibly nice suit, but no less nice than any of my suits.

So as I open the door, he goes waddle/scuttling into the toilet stall, which some kind individual ripped the door off of several weeks ago. Because who wants to take a dump in privacy? But, you know, he damn well should have been in there in the first place. Door or no door. He never picks his head up, nor does he stop muttering to himself while he awkwardly waddle/scuttles into the stall. And he continues muttering while I pee out two very large cups of coffee, very quickly, so I can get out of there as fast as possible.

Today I was just over a foot away from naked, staring-me-right-in-the-face hairy man-ass. Shitty, shitty man-ass. The day has nowhere to go but up from here.